I’d never been to a Maker Faire before. My friend Kevin had invited me. This is Kevin:
When Kevin invites you to an event, you can be assured that one of several conditions apply:
Many parts of Kevin stopped aging when he turned five, which makes him fantastic company at any event. I was in.
I’m back from Asia! The first order of business after return was securing a room. And so it was off to my favorite adventure play land: SF Bay Area Craigslist.
One mistake people commonly make searching for housing in San Francisco is that they think housing will come to them. They post sweetly earnest ads on Craigslist under the “Rooms Wanted”:
“Hi,
My name is Erin and I am looking for a room to rent […]I have a medium sized dog and an aquatic turtle. Charlie, the dog, is fully potty trained, and stays in his “house” when home alone. Rosie, the turtle, lives in a tank. Both are super amazing to live with as well.
Thanks for getting back to me, and I look forward to the opportunity of being potential roommates. 🙂
<;3 Erin”
Or you could follow this guy’s lead (SUBJECT: Click me! I’m Cool!), and post a picture:
A new project: 90 second profiles of Bay Area locales by the people who live, work, and play there. They’re better equipped to tell its story than I am. Plus I know that I lose you all after two paragraphs of writing anyway.
After several months of quiet, Oakland’s most notorious activists/merry pranksters/anarchists/guerrilla underground people’s army are once again making global headlines. First, there was this weekend’s attempted takeover of a vacant building. By now we can pretty well guess how that was going to go before it even got started:
You’re in a coffin floating in half a foot of unrecycled salt water. The air is warm and swampy, it’s cave dark, and there’s a slight burn in your body orifices. You’ve been floating for fifteen minutes, but it feels like a few hours.
Odds are, if you’ve heard of West Virginia—and in California, that’s no given— it’s for the wrong reasons. Popular reasons the state gets brought into conversations include:
It’s everyone’s favorite time of year: “The Holidays.” You know—plastic birthing scenes, deforestation, acute political correctness, and, of course, booze. Lots of booze.
What better ambassador for the season than Griz, the Santa Claus of brew making. Griz is a very big man who runs a very little shop called Brew Craft in SF’s Richmond District. Read the rest of this entry »
Having reached consensus on most of America’s pressing social issues, San Francisco has found clever ways to waste catastrophic amounts of time on such questions as:
Reverend Don did not seem to mind that I was a couple minutes late to class.
“Meet Two Tones,” he said gesturing towards the artificial blond to my right. Two Tones had the wispy air of an elderly substitute teacher. She had a pillow beneath her feet so that they could touch the floor.
Reverend Don (far right) & company.
“And Emily.” Emily looked mortified at being caught in a class with someone named Two Tones.
It’s grand living in San Francisco, but I miss America. You know–warm summer nights, near-universal acceptance of circumcision, obesity and the fantastic food that makes it possible. I’ll miss this weird little peninsula but it’s time to roam. So aside from a couple of dispatches in Virginia and Isreal, I’m taking a little break from SF Republic to focus on other writing and get my head in the game and gear up for an extravagant September return.
Peace out, fog creatures.
San Francisco Republic 